Are You Ready To Be Consistent? |197

One of the biggest challenges that everyone talks about is consistency.  Consistency can be with anything really, not just health and fitness! I mean, I struggle with consistency. I am a business owner and I have to be consistent in putting out content, I have to be consistent with my work weekly and daily.  I have to be consistent with my clients and getting new clients, spending time with my husband, spending time with my family, being consistent with my fitness, etc. We all struggle with consistency, and we tend to fall into these stop-and-start periods of this.

Health and fitness is my jam and a lot of the things I talk about can span different areas of our lives, but my primary focus is health and fitness.  So, I want to share several ways that will help with consistency, in no particular order, but they build onto one another.  So, this episode is for you if you have ever said, “I just can’t keep my momentum. I can’t find it. I can’t sustain it, or I just can’t keep it!” If you really want to create a plan that you can stick to for more than 3 months, then keep reading!  You need to find the strength to be able to put yourself first versus everything else that keeps knocking our health and fitness out of the box!  So here are 10 steps to help you stay the course of consistency!

One – Get specific.
A lot of my clients say they want to get healthy. Well, healthy is a big fucking word! What does that mean? Get specific about what you want!  The more specific you get in what you want to achieve, the more likely you are to achieve it!  I want to get off blood pressure medication or whatever medication you may be on, I want to open my closet and wear whatever the hell I want, I want to have a healthy breakfast every morning!  Get really specific!! Get granular!!   Be so freaking specific so a rando on the street knows what you are talking about!

Two – Know your why.
Why do you want this? What are your reasons?  Is your why that you want your doctor to stop telling you need to lose weight? Is your why that you want to have the energy to keep up with your kids? Is your why that you want to wear what you want!? Is your why that you want to feel good at the beach in a bathing suit? Find that WHY!

Three – Set yourself up for success.
Be the person that says this is WHAT success looks like!  Do you struggle with working out?  How can you make sure you get it done in the day to make sure you are working out?  Set a bedtime to get up earlier.  Meal prep and I don’t mean your Tupperware laid out!  Cook double dinner, it can be as easy as this.  Double cook for lunch the next day or dinner the next day.  Lay your clothes out the night before! Pre-book your classes and treat those workouts like a dentist appointment. How can I set myself up for success with my goals?
 
Four – Break up with the guilt.
Stop with the guilt.  Stop with it if you set up these ridiculous expectations about yourself!  Going to the gym for 2 hours every day, eating “ON POINT” every day. I’m going to do this or these 400 things on the checklist.  This doesn’t account for your actual life.  No guilt.  It’s not about willpower, it’s about skills!  Instead of saying, “I have to have willpower.” say, “How can I practice the thing I am going to do?”  How can I practice regularly going to the gym? How can I practice getting my ass to bed on time? How can I practice making sure I get enough vegetables in my body? How do I start to put those practices into place?

Not every day you are going to knock it out of the park. 80% of the time you will but that 20% doesn’t go your way and you start saying NOPE this is why I can’t!  Stop thinking about how it should look and start to look at the options you could do.  Good, better, best. You know I talk about this all the time.  What is the good choice, better choice, and best choice?  Everyday can’t be an A+++ day!
 
Five – Tracking your progress.
I don’t mean the scale either. So many things go into that damn scale.  Unless you are a virgin dieter, you aren’t going to lose 1-2 pounds a week.  You can’t always be on a diet, so the diet is probably keeping you stuck.  Track progress with a food log – 80% of all of your progress is going to come from nutrition.  You need to fuel yourself properly for when you work out. If you don’t fuel properly, you won’t get those gains from the workout.  Now you don’t have to do this for the rest of your life, but if things aren’t working the way you want, we need to start using data. Data NOT drama.

Sometimes you lose track of what things look like measurement-wise, so you need to check up on those things.  A food log is about awareness. What are you actually putting in your mouth?  This is just more knowledge for you to look at.  You can measure your progress by measuring your body, you can take pictures, look at your cravings, are you hungry, are you not hungry. How’s your energy? How’s your sleep? Those 4 things will tell you what is going on.

Six – Boundaries.
This is huge for so many women.  So many of us are people pleasers and taught not to rock the boat, raised to go along to get along.  You created your why is the beginning of your boundaries. If I told myself, I was going to bed at 9pm. If something is happening at 9pm in my house, do I need to be a part of it? Is there a reason for me to be up past 9pm?

Protect your bedtime boundary for example and it will snowball into other things in your life. It’s time to establish some teeny-tiny boundaries that you can actually stick to. Make sure you know what’s a definite yes and what’s a big ol’ no-no. And let’s hold ourselves accountable, shall we? No more excuses for letting those lines blur!

Seven – 1% better every day & the power of 1 thing.
James Clear (he is another fave of mine!)  said “The small incremental changes are what matters.”  So many of us want to step up and hit a home run! But it’s the little things that we do over and over again that are going to build us to success – 1 little thing at a time.  When we do those simple small things, we expect it to be like amazon prime and get dramatic results in a few days. You think you suck and you’re off to the next thing.  But what can I stick with?  I suggest 90 days to start something for that long and see how long you can sustain it, every 30 days you do a check-in. What is going on, let’s look at the data then we can make small tweaks here and there.

The power of 1 thing.  If I am changing 100 freaking variables, how do I know what the thing is that moves the dial??  We need to do the big dial movers – 1 thing at a time (just like with 1% better).  What is that one small thing that you can change to see that dial move?  It could be water! It could be adding more fruits and vegetables every day. Maybe you’re not eating enough protein, so add 20-30g of protein every meal! It could be moving your body 15-30 minutes a day, regular exercise, or walks! These small changes add up! Like a snowstorm, you don’t get 30 inches all at once, you may get an inch an hour for 24 hours and it starts to pile up! Think of that!

Eight – Keep your goals front and center.
What are you trying to achieve? HOW are you going to achieve this goal?  What are the actions I need to take in order to get off the blood pressure medication or do this or that?  My doctor said I need to lose 20 pounds. What are the steps to get to those 20 pounds?
●      How am I sleeping?
●      How am I moving my body?
●      How am I managing my stress?
●      What am I eating?
Start to think about these actions. So, if I keep my goals front and center it is my reminder.  It is my why and constant visual queue.

Nine – Obstacles.
Obstacles are going to show up.  Some of them are known obstacles too.  What are the things that always come up that get in your way?  Then start to brainstorm…  If this obstacle comes in I will do this. If X happens, I will do Y.  What are the ones that always come up?

Break up with perfection. It is not a thing!  We are human and shit is going to happen.
If I say shit is going to happen but I am prepared when shit happens, that is really going to help me break through our perfectionism…  What can we focus on, and everything will fall into place? What can we focus on for 90 days? How did it go? What are the tweaks and adjustments we need to make?  We don’t need to go for the A+. We can go for the B-, you are above average and not perfect!   I know for me, the more I strive for perfection the more I would get disappointed. The more disappointed I get; I then say fuck it I am not doing it! Let’s just keep going and stop looking for perfection!

Ten – Make a decision and make it work!
Put a stake in the ground and say this is what I am going for and make it work! This is where we do our REPS.  Is it realistic for my life?  Are you excited about it? Can you make a plan for it in your life? Is it sustainable? I look at this and say is this a realistic decision? Can I do this? Is adding more vegetables realistic? YES! So how can I now fit this into my life?  What can you do vs. these are the rules and you must stick with it. Some days you won’t get it, but look back and say where can I get better?

Here’s a bonus…

JUST START!
It’s not going to be pretty; it’s not going to look like what it did in our 30s.  Just start, just do what you can.  “Do what you can with what you got.” – Arthur Ashe. Beginnings are messy and it’s okay.  There’s no easy way to begin. They are hard, they feel uncomfortable, and you’re questioning everything.  But this is where I want to ask you… Do you like where you are? If you don’t like where you are, then we have to start doing something.  To see a change, we have to make a change.  And it doesn’t have to be a radical change. It can be something simple but make that change.

If you are ready to get consistent and you just need a little more support and structure, in JUNE I am running a 5 Days To Consistency Challenge, and if you are interested go to the link below. It is a FREE 5-day challenge!

Listen, you don’t have to be perfect to get SHIT DONE! JUST START!!!
LINKS

Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/kimbarnesjeffersoncoach

Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website:
https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661

5 Days To Consistency Challenge:
https://kimbarnesjefferson.lpages.co/5-days-to-consistency/